Pale Moon – a better Firefox browser?

The Pale Moon project is a new free 3rd party version of the Firefox web browser that uses the Mozilla engine while removing a bunch of unnecessary code to make the whole thing run significantly faster. The biggest change is the optimisation of the Firefox engine for modern fast processors, which gives a speed boost of up to 3x over the standard Firefox.

It certainly seems snappy in places, but of course there are trade-offs in terms of total compatibility (e.g. Pale Moon won’t run ActiveX), and one serious thing to note is the fact that it shares your Firefox profiles, so you need to be careful if/when uninstalling that you don’t wipe your original Firefox profile settings. Worth a look if you’re a total speed junkie, your extensions should run fine.

Specifically optimized for current processors. It makes full use of the enhanced instruction sets of newer CPUs – as a result, this browser will not run on older systems. # Support for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) and Canvas, both vector-based types of graphics. # Support for Firefox Extensions and Themes. # Support for Personas. # CSS Downloadable Font support (including WOFF). # HTML5 and advanced DOM support.